Today the 11th 40 Days for Life campaign kicks off.

I mention it because IMO 40 Days is one of the best things the pro-life movement has going.

At abortion clinics where 40 Days prayer warriors have maintained a presence, 6,749 documented lives have been saved, 76 abortion workers have left the industry, and 28 abortion clinics have closed (including one just 1-1/2 weeks ago) – all since 2004.

40 Days is at 261 abortion clinic locations in the U.S. and around the world. Find the one nearest you, and make a point to join in between now and March 24. Of course, pray wherever you are about this God-touched effort.

Also, as Susie mentioned yesterday, there is a Facebook effort in conjunction with 40 Days to enlist pro-lifers to display the same avatar on their FB page for all 40 days to show support. I’ve joined in on my FB group page, as have 31,354 other pro-lifers at last count.

40 Days for Life hurts the abortion business. Imagine union protesters standing outside nonunion shops, known as “rats,” for 40 days in a row twice a year. It sends a message.

Heaven forbid that any mainstream reporter should actually do some actual journalism the way “just a blogger” Jill Stanek did on this story.

If you know anything about Jill Stanek (which, of course, no liberal reporter would) you know that she wouldn’t report something like this unless she was absolutely certain of the facts, and so this concern-troll attitude that Stanek’s reporting “could not be immediately verified” bespeaks the incompetence and sloth of reporters who can’t be bothered, at least, to contact Stanek as a source.

~ Robert Stacy McCain expressing contempt over the failure of the mainstream media to adequately cover the story of the latest victim of abortionist LeRoy Carhart, Jennifer McKenna Morbelli, The Other McCain, February 12

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• Jennifer McKenna-Morbelli’s death after abortion was covered by News 12 Long Island.
• A 16-year-old girl in Texas is suing her parents for allegedly trying to force her into an abortion.
• A federal judge has blocked Arizona’s attempt to prevent Planned Parenthood from getting Medicaid funds:
  

  In an 11-page ruling, Judge Neil Wake [a G.W. Bush appointee] said legislation approved last year violates federal laws which say that those enrolled in the Medicaid program are entitled to get their services from any qualified medical provider.

  He said there was no evidence presented that Planned Parenthood is not qualified to offer family planning services. Instead, Wake said, the law is simply an attempt by legislators to prevent Planned Parenthood from getting any federal or state funds, no matter for what they are used.

• In New Mexico, a man has been charged after attacking his pregnant girlfriend. The district attorney will also appeal to state lawmakers to pass a law to add punishments when someone attacks a pregnant woman and her child:
  

  … [T]he fetus survived the attack by Andrew Thomas [pictured], 26, who is accused of punching and beating Jessica Aguilera with a broom handle at the home they share in Logan. Thomas is also charged with felony attempted murder and kidnapping and misdemeanor interfering with communications and criminal damage to property.

  Aguilera told officers that Thomas had been drinking and was arguing with his mother on the phone when she told him “it’s stupid the way you threaten your mother.”

  According to court records, the couple began arguing with Aguilera deciding to leave. She said Thomas took her cell phone and threw objects at the car as she attempted to flee.

  Thomas opened the door of the vehicle and pulled Aguilera out by her hair, punching her as he dragged her back into the house, according to court records.

by Susie Allen, host of the blog, Pro-Life in TN, and Kelli

We welcome your suggestions for additions to our Top Blogs (see tab on right side of home page)! Email Susie@jillstanek.com.

• Pro-Life Action League has filed a formal complaint demanding an investigation into the death of 24-year-old Tonya Reaves at Chicago Planned Parenthood clinic:
  

  While normally, such violations of professional medical standards would be reported to the Illinois Department of Public Health, all Illinois Planned Parenthood facilities are unlicensed. As a result, any investigation relating to sub-standard medical care on their part is entrusted to [the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation].

• Reproductive Research Audit points out the flaws in a so-called study which California is attempting to use to overturn a law requiring that only physicians perform abortions. Though the study claims risks to women would be “minimal,” RRA found otherwise:
  

  Using the sample and the number of complications provided, RRA found that non-physician abortions were twice as likely to experience a complication, and one additional woman per seventy-five women would have an adverse effect if medical standards were lowered.

• Secular ProLife encourages pro-lifers on Facebook to support a secular social media campaign (graphic pictured left) to correspond with the prayer-based event, 40 Days for Life.
• John Smeaton expresses gratefulness to the resigning Pope Benedict XVI for linking the defense of marriage with protecting life.
• At the LTI Blog, Scott Klusendorf explains why pro-life Protestants should be interested in the election of the new Pope.
• Real Choice writes of a previously undiscovered 1995 death at Family Planning Associates Medical Group in California, in which a 21-year-old was given too much anesthetic. While the patient’s friend waited for hours on site, clinic personnel neglected to alert him to the fact that the patient had been transferred to a hospital where she later died.

  So far, 15 deaths at this facility have been uncovered, from 1970-2004.

• At Live Action, Nancy Flanders responds to a profane Jezebel blog which discusses the “best age to abort,” settling on age 25. Of course, for the pro-choice crowd, abortion is not a serious subject. Flanders writes:
  

  … [Blogger Erin Gloria] Ryan says that women are more likely to be financially stable at this age and still very fertile and therefore don’t have much to lose by having an abortion. She says that since the average age of marriage is now 27, women should be all set to abort any children at age 25 because in the next two years they will likely find a life partner and still have time to get pregnant. So it’s okay to toss this baby aside.

  Of course, she notes, “it’s more emotional to abort when you know the guy’s last name.” So, women, Ryan’s advice is to engage only in casual sex with strangers until you’re ready to be married. Only then, she believes, should you attempt a real relationship with a man; otherwise, you risk letting any baby you create live, and that would ruin your life.

• Reflections of a Paralytic reports that Malala Yousufzai, the brave young woman who was shot in the head by the Taliban for seeking an education, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize:
  

  American feminists take note: this is what a real “war on women” looks like. Not the supposed threat of limited access to abortion and birth control. In fact, our foremothers in the battle for women’s equality here in the United States — women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton — abhorred abortion.

  Below is a video of Malala, shared in a CBS News article:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/YGLKqd89BaA[/youtube]

UPDATE 2/13 3:27p: I have made a slideshow of photos of some of Carhart’s illegally dumped items, adding a few more photos than I originally posted yesterday.

2/13 12:37p: An investigator with the Environmental Crimes Unit of the Maryland Attorney General’s Office has notified Maryland Coalition for Life that his department is launching a criminal investigation against late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart’s clinic.

The call to MCFL’s executive director Michael Martelli came yesterday in follow-up to a complaint lodged by Martelli’s group in November 2012.

That complaint alleged Carhart’s clinic was illegally dumping medical and biohazardous waste, patients’ medical records and private information, medications, and syringes.

It would seem not coincidental that this investigation was announced four days after the death of a mother following an abortion at that same clinic.

Operation Rescue is today reporting the investigator, David Williams, also contacted Janet Kotowski, manager of Germantown Pregnancy Choices, who lodged the complaint.

Operation Rescue first filed a complaint and reported on the illegal dumping in July 2012:

Between August, 2011, and May, 2012, trash generated by Germantown Reproductive Health Services was inspected and photographed by pro-life activists working in conjunction with Operation Rescue….

“In light of new clinic regulations that are set to go into effect on July 23, we are asking the Maryland Board of Physicians and the Department of Health to fully investigate Carhart’s dumping practices… and take whatever disciplinary action is necessary to protect the public,” said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue and Pro-life Nation.

When no state agency took action, Maryland Coalition for Life filed a second complaint this past November.

“We submitted a laundry list of reasons why the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene should not license Carhart and should inspect him,” Martelli told me.

That same month the state enacted abortion clinic regulations. Ironically, the day before Jennifer McKenna Morbelli died last week on February 7, DHMH licensed 17 abortion clinics, including Carhart’s – without ever having inspected them.

The investigator told Martelli yesterday his department was specifically interested in the medical and biohazardous waste found and cataloged by Martelli’s group from Carhart’s dumpster.

“He reiterated four times that they were launching a criminal investigation,” Martelli relayed. Cheryl Sullenger of OR also spoke with Williams yesterday, who confirmed this a “very serious criminal investigation.”

Following is a slideshow of just some of the photos of illegal waste found in Carhart’s trash between August 2011 and May 2012 that were submitted with the complaint….

[meteor_slideshow slideshow=”carhart-trash-final-3″]

by Hans Johnson

Albany Rose, now ardently pro-life, painstakingly set out to retrieve the records of her abortion at Planned Parenthood, which she quickly found were inaccurate. From her website:

I was sixteen years old when I had my abortion. For  years, I pushed the memories of that time in my life completely out of my mind.

It was only during the summer of 2010 that my views changed on abortion, and in 2011 I decided that I wanted to get my medical records back from that day. I wanted them back so I would hopefully be able to start filling some of the holes in my past.  For a year I put it off, trying to muster up the courage to get my records, and now I speak out today about what I got back from them, and encourage more women to do the same. For truth, and for healing.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/k_b17lo5AtA[/youtube]

You can hear Albany’s interview and post-abortive experience with Laura Ingraham here.

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: Laura Ingraham]

Calling elderly patients unable to feed themselves “tube people” and saying that “the problem won’t be solved unless you let them hurry up and die” is not only offensive and cruel, it misses an important point: Japan is getting older because the Japanese have stopped having children….

The average Japanese woman gives birth to one child at around thirty, and stops.

Japan’s fiscal-demographic trap is not the result of some law of nature — it’s the product of culture. For a host of reasons, the Japanese placed having and rearing children near the bottom of their “to do” list.

Japan is only leading the way in this regard. Nineteen countries, including Germany and South Korea, have lower fertility rates than Japan. Singapore’s rate is forty percent lower than Japan’s.

Here in the USA, our worker-to-retiree ratio is projected to be the same in 2050 as Japan’s is today.

The economic consequences of declining fertility rates are no secret. Yet, telling people they should have more children these days is only slightly less popular than urging the elderly to “hurry up and die.”

Oh, by the way, the U.S. fertility rate is now below replacement level. But of course that’s okay, because no government official here would ever say the elderly should hurry up and die. Right?

~ Eric Metaxas, commenting on Japanese finance minister Taro Aso’s suggestion that a fiscal crisis could be helped by allowing elderly invalids to die, Break Point, February 11

(Side note: Interestingly, Japan has been testing and selling Babyloid robots (which are meant to act like infants), for treating symptoms of depression in the elderly… in lieu of human infants.)

[Photo via headlineslibrary.wordpress.com]

Click all photos to enlarge…

Read backstory, “BREAKING: Carhart’s victims identified.”

Over 250 people gathered at Germantown Reproductive Health Services abortion clinic in Germantown, Maryland, this morning to demand justice for the death of 29-year-old Jennifer McKenna Morbelli (pictured right), who perished at the hand of late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart on February 7, along with her 33-week-old preborn baby, Madison Leigh.

As protesters gathered outside, Carhart carried on with his abortion business as usual inside.

ABC News and the Washington Post were among news outlets that attended the press conference/prayer vigil.

Representative from several organizations spoke, including Father Frank Pavone (pictured below) of Priests for Life, Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition, Day Gardner of the National Black Pro-Life Union, Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life of America, Mallory Quigley from the Susan B. Anthony List, Michael Mortelli of the Maryland Coalition for Life, Anna Higgins of Family Research Council, and Catherine Glenn Foster of Alliance Defending Freedom, as well as three local pastors.

The group made six demands:

1. That Shady Grove Adventist Hospital, where Jennifer died, file a formal complaint with the Maryland Board of Physicians. It would seem to me a pragmatic move, if nothing else, for the hospital to distance itself as far as possible from Carhart, since lawsuits in abundance should be anticipated.

2. That the Maryland Board of Physicians revoke Carhart’s license, which never should have been given in the first place, since he lied on his application.

3. That the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene close down the clinic during the investigations.

4. That building owner Todd Stave close down the clinic until investigations are complete, again, for pragmatic self-preservation purposes, if nothing else.

5. That the Executive Park Condo Association shut down the clinic until investigations are complete. The association has the ability to control what takes place inside its office park.

6. That the Maryland House and Senate each pass Pain Capable Fetal Protection bills that have already been submitted this legislative session.  SB 456 and HB 1312 would ban abortions in Maryland past the point when preborn babies can feel pain, 20 weeks from fertilization. This law would have saved both baby Madison’s life as well as her mother’s.

See video of the press conference here.